Talks
Weeds and their Metaphors: Understanding Non-Normative Plants in a Social Context
Barney Pau
A weed is only a weed because someone decided it doesn’t belong. In the same way, identity and social categories are often shaped by arbitrary definitions.
Using weeds as a lens for queer identity, Barney Pau explores resistance, classification, and the overlap between culture, ecology, and selfhood.
Through research into botanical naming systems, colonial histories, and MAP’s ongoing exhibition, Paper Gardens: Art, Botany and Empire, we’ll unpack how ideas of belonging are constructed, inherited and challenged.
This programme is part of MAP’s monthly series of research-focused talks, A Closer Look, and in collaboration with Bar Cameo.
Bookings
Barney Pau
Barney Pau (he/him) is a London-based culinary creative working at the confluence of food, art, and writing, whose practice focuses on food futures, queering consumption, and foraging and fermenting as social resistance. His writing, food, and artwork examine the intersection between language, culture and nature through contemporary social critique.
He believes food, in its ubiquity, transcends language as a mode of communication, and by applying it as an artistic medium it can be used to impart new thinking. In his practice, he uses food both to communicate my thinking and as a point of departure for research.
He is the founding editor of Finger Food Magazine, editor of the Gramounce Journal, and director of the Gramounce Queer Food short course. He writes for numerous publications, including the Queering Theory series for MOLD Magazine, and has been peer-reviewed by Antennae Journal, and publish my own Substack.
He has developed culinary events for several brands, including Maison Margiela, Ffern, DAZED, TOAST, the Hoxton Hotel, and The New Archive, among others. He has developed artworks for the Lethaby Gallery, the Royal College of Art and the Architectural Association, to name a few, alongside a number of self-directed shows.
When he’s not jamming ferments into jars, peering at plants on the pavement, or writing my ramblings, you can usually find him foraging for my food or reading books on baking.
